Quote:
Niall Matthews wrote:
Aiki as something you have isn't normally used in Japanese.

Maybe it's incorrect in the usual aikido way of explaining aiki, but aikido comes from daito ryu and here is a little of how it was explained there--not as a dynamic of moving around an attacker's movement, but of a force emanating from the aiki man:

From Stan Pranin's "Conversations with Daito Ryu Masters" (p. 95)

""MRS. HORIKAWA:
During practice (Kodo) Horikawa would apply aiki and keep it applied for minutes on end while he was speaking, so it was pretty rough on his partner!

MORISHITA:
Yes, because you weren't able to move at all. And gradually, it would become difficult to breathe.""

They're not talking about "applying aiki" by doing tenkan or getting the opponent in an armlock. This is where the opponent grabs or just touches Horikawa and he "emits" aiki force into their bodies as you see on page 97 of the same book. Also, same page of the same book:

""MRS. HORIKAWA:
He even had aiki in the soles of his feet.""

He had aiki.

And on p. 96:

""MRS. HORIKAWA:
He would send aiki through his fingers...""

So in daito ryu, aiki is something you "have".

It was in aikido that it became something you "do".

David

So is Mrs. Horikawa the defining authority on the correct usage of the term "aiki"? It simply doesn't make a lot of sense, given the antecedents of the term for a couple of thousand years. Maybe it's a vernacular within Daito Ryu (who knows?), but technically the forces are aspects of ki, not of "aiki". Heck, I can even see it as an idiomatic use and I know what someone is trying to say... but technically "aiki" is something that you do with ki, it's not force by itself. And as grandiose as it sounds, "aiki", it's still going to use the same basic forces that are a kokyu power. Any amount of money you want to bet.